The Face of Evil
by The Cat Who Lived
Summary: Hermione Granger is borderline psychopathic with a bit of an attitude problem. Harry Potter is a socially awkward loner. Ron is too dumb to string a sentence together. Lav and Parvati are big time bullies. Of course, it's up to Snape to deal with the consequences. No one can resist a deranged Harry Potter fanfic, right? Right? *facepalm*
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: She-devil**

Hermione Granger stumbled into the Potions classroom, giving everything from the charred, bubbling cauldron on the Potions Master's desk to the Potions Master himself, a death glare. Tongues of flame froze to ice and licked the room insidiously as the notorious psychopath stalked down the centre aisle, entertaining a twisted fantasy beneath her devilish curls.

Harry Potter looked at her calmly. A steady acquaintance of four years, he almost thought of her as a friend, but Hermione Granger did not do 'friends'. She regarded her peers as incidental _creatures_ in the background, wild animals loosely chained, who fulfilled her environment pretty much as the 'warts' of Hogwarts- mundane unpleasantries one had no choice but to put up with, if one was to glean an education.

"She is so _creepy_!" Parvati whispered to her sidekick, Lavender, who snickered halfway through a head-to-toe makeover.

"I _know_," Lavender finished for her. "What _hair_! It's scarier than a zombie's."

Hermione smiled wickedly in their direction. She did indeed look like something picked up from a graveyard, her dark lips drizzled in blood oozing out from critically chapped lips, jutting into a shape as sharp as a knife; made more horrific by her bare, brown eyes, which bore into their subjects with hypnotic insolence, so intense they seemed not to breathe- which would explain the deoxygenated black bruises under her eyes, from nights of not sleeping and days of living in a coffin.

"Settle down," Snape hissed in a predatory tone. Hermione tutted mockingly his way.

Snape's eyes narrowed into calculating slits. He approached her desk, where she was indolently strewn across a stool, catching Harry's nervous attention.

"Face me, you brat," he spat at the attention-seeking, wannabe illegitimate-child-of-Voldemort-and-Bellatrix-Lestrange.

"Hermione..." Harry Potter warned. Hermione stroked his cheek unexpectedly.

"You poor thing," she chided in a ruthless, mocking tone. "You baby." Her gruesome nail scraped a scar down his cheek.

"What the-" Harry started, but Snape cut in.

"Detention, beast," he settled, looking placid and bored. "Noble as your intentions may be of ridding this world of another Potter, your methods are hardly permissible in this liberal-minded school. You will report to me after class, understood?" Hermione did not answer, merely batted her spidery eyelashes fake-sweetly.

"Of course not, you illiterate dunderhead," he muttered, rolling his eyes as he stalked off.

Harry scuttled away from her, hurt and rejected. Hermione was usually alright to him- what had gotten into her today? She was a walking, talking advertisement for St. Brutus' Insecure Centre for the Criminally Insane! From across the room, Ron gaped at her stupidly, though that wasn't altogether remarkable because he gaped at everything stupidly. Even Malfoy avoided the madwoman as far as possible, after she attempted to murder him last year under the excuse of punching him in the face.

Snape prowled the classroom taking points off wastrels for brewing passable concoctions, sending Neville to the hospital wing after he grew an extra head blowing up a potion because he was so busy trembling under Snape and Hermione's deranged presence. He took marks off Harry's potion for breathing down his nose on it, claiming it interfered with the purity of the ingredients. Ron accidentally drooled in his, which also spoiled their properties. Hermione's was precise to the point of unnerving the Potions Master: even her talents were unnatural and malicious.

"Is it alright?" she ventured coyly. "Perhaps it could do with a drop of slow poison?" Snape snorted dismissively- _'There are worse things out there than a drawn-out, childish, death.'_

_Oh, didn't she know it?_

"Not so fast, Ms Granger," Snape beckoned at the the end of the lesson. Hermione paused, one foot through the door, and strutted slowly up to his desk, staring him down.

"I was only testing," she whispered, leaning in more than necessary. "To see how much...you wanted me." She raised an eyebrow vampishly and licked her bleeding lips, savouring the taste of blood.

Snape tripped over his desk chair and stared at her as if it wasn't only Neville who'd grown an extra head. He drank her in for a long moment, then voiced, "Come with me, Miss Granger," marching into his adjoining office. Hermione followed him emotionlessly to the eery room fully of slimy commodities. She wondered whether one of them would be his hair gel.

"Sit," he commanded, towering over the petite girl who was filled with so much venom it dissolved her appetite. Hermione thumped into his chair, splaying her legs carelessly on the table, knees bent at an awkward angle.

Snape refused to show how uncomfortable he was and merely let on that he was sickened. A flicker of mortification sparkled through Hermione's eyes, but the light went out faster than a fused lightbulb.

"Get your legs _off_ my desk before I spell them off their ligaments," Snape snarled, to start with. Hermione shrugged and swivelled round in her chair, riding her robes up her thighs in the process. They were doused with glistening cuts.

Snape inhaled sharply and whipped the folds down with a stroke of his wand, fixing her with unreadable eye contact.

"Promising criminal though you are," he drawled icily, "a petty convict is at least deserving of community service." He paused to dramatise her sentence. "You are to report to me every Monday at six o'clock to help service my store cupboard. No. Excuses."

Hermione was completely unfazed by this. She jumped up and strolled over to the door. "And my detention?" she blurted cockily.

Snape peered sinisterly down his crooked nose at the offender. A poignant silence and then: "Being Hermione Granger ought to be detention enough." Granger saw red as she excused herself.

It was the start of term, an inevitable new year that reeked of old habits dying hard. So what if it was the Triwizard Tournament all of a sudden? Hermione was as bitter as ever, if not more. She headed to the girls' toilets for a quick gothic touch-up. Seeing her enter the deserted second-floor toilets alone, Parvati and Lavender exchanged a telepathic '_Ping_!'.

"Ooh look," Parvati crooned, rounding up on the oddball. "It must be freaky Friday." Lavender twisted a curl playfully around her finger. If there was one thing they had learned about their rival over the years, it was that Hermione didn't fight back. She was above defending herself, beyond whimpering in pain. Just the way she relished the bloodbath of her lips, was an unspoken invitation to incite her.

"Bet I can make her cry," Parvati challenged Lavender. Lavender, however, was preoccupied with her reflection. Parvati stomped her feet at the enigma in front of her, slapping Hermione angrily when she began to laugh.

"You _bitch_!" she shrieked, tearing up herself with rage and passion. Hermione was so an upcoming Dark Lady- as far as she was concerned, she belonged in Slytherin, and being a Slytherin was as good as a death sentence. Especially after her treatment of Harry that afternoon- it made Parvati's blood boil to look at her.

"Oh, _boo-hoo_," Hermione wailed, breaking into pretend-sobs. "How could you, Parvati, darling? You broke my heart!" Parvati scrunched her nose at the turn in conversation.

"Oh, help me out, you bimbo!" she snapped at Lavender, who was a hair away from kissing her own reflection. Lavender screamed when Parvati span her around, so that she almost kissed her.

"Watch who you're snogging!" Parvati squealed, having a homophobic heart attack. Hermione's eyes glinted spontaneously.

"Got a thing for girls, have you?" she goaded suddenly. "How much do you charge?" Her eyes blurred with frenzied tears. Edging forward, she fully intended to rape her perpetrator once and for all, but her tears watered down her evil-doings. Losing herself, she pressed her body against Parvati's astonished figure, and gave her lips a tender, bloody kiss. Parvati's eyes popped out of their sockets.

"You're mad!" Parvati spluttered, pushing Hermione off her. "You sick pervert!" She heaved as if she was going to be sick.

Hermione's eyes widened as she realised what she had done. Her eyes trailed to Lavender, who looked equally worried for her virtue. Losing her head, Hermione tore out of the room. It was bad enough that she shared a dormitory with these girls- now she might as well be murdered in her bed.

"Her-Hermione," Harry stammered, distracted from snooping around in the corridors. "What's wrong?" He was shocked to see his closest thing to a friend in such a mess. It jarred him right out of brooding over his loneliness.

"Harry!" Hermione sobbed, unable to look him in the eye. Now Harry was very concerned: Hermione was an informal basilisk. Instinctively, he reached out to comfort her. She flinched alarmingly. "Don't touch me!" she screamed, much like Moaning Myrtle. She slid down the wall and broke into hacking sobs. "Please, don't touch me," she pleaded, staring off into space. Harry shivered involuntarily. He said nothing but sat next to Hermione with the kind of reserve right for a memorial. Everything about Harry was right for a memorial.

Hermione didn't move until nightfall. Harry was getting painfully bored but didn't want to be unchivalrous and wander off. He was therefore glad for curfew to crop up as an excuse to finally go off and snooze, when the teachers made to patrol the corridor.

"Hermione?" he announced but she didn't respond, face propped in her hugged knees. Unwittingly, he put a hand on her knee to stir her. She recoiled violently.

"I said 'no'!" she screamed, slamming him into the wall. Footsteps interrupted the commotion down the corridor.

Snape took one look at the situation and promised himself early retirement on the spot. He couldn't decide whether an emotionally volatile Granger or exceptionally concussed Potter was a greater blow to his sanity.

"Will someone tell me what is going on here?" he asked conversationally. As expected, there was no reply.

"Shame I'm the go-between for Pomfrey's healing potions," he snarked. "No allowance for me to lose my marbles." He levitated the hormonal teenagers to the hospital wing, taking care to keep out of view of the mediwitch when he got there so it looked like they just happened upon the matron in full-blown unconsciousness. Hogwarts was full of surprises.

A fleeting examination told the mediwitch that Mr Potter had sustained minor memory loss and Miss Granger was just naturally demented. She pursed her lips at discovering superficial cuts all over her body- self-inflicted by the looks of it- and a few more private injuries. She had of course heard all the rumours about the deranged girl, but was disturbed to finally shed some light on it.

Hermione awoke to someone infringing on her privacy.

"What are you doing?" she demanded as Madam Pomfrey peeled back her gown to tend to some nasty injuries. Madam Pomfrey handled her body with the kind of expertise that made her feel dehumanised. She was being over-sensitive of course. If she kicked a fuss it would only draw attention to her phobias and she really didn't want to make a scene. Funny that.

Harry stirred groggily in the next bed. The curtains were drawn around Hermione's bed so he didn't realise she was there. Not that he was feeling one-hundred percent mentally: he had the nagging feeling he was missing something.

Both were equally resistant to Madam Pomfrey's discharge questionnaire: Harry, because he couldn't remember anything recent and Hermione, because she was wary of the woman. It was protocol to report anything prominent to the Head of House, so it was no use arguing with Hermione over her cuts and scrapes and grudgingly, the world-wise girl knew it.

Professor McGonagall, while appreciative of the girl's transfiguration, was just as hesitant as the rest of the school about her mental stability. A project, she loved just as much as the next professor, but the immaculate conception of Bellatrix Lestrange and Lord Voldemort was quite the stain on Gryffindor pride.

"Hello, Miss Granger," she addressed her drily at their initial appointment. "Professor Snape tells me you're sampling his latest mode of detention."

"If all goes well," she confirmed sardonically, "we begin next Monday."

Professor McGonagall blinked. _Had Severus possessed the girl?_

"Now, to task." She cleared her throat matter-of-factly. "I take it you are aware of our reason for meeting?"

"I sharpen knives on myself?" the queer girl suggested. Professor McGonagall felt a headache coming on. "Would you like a biscuit?" she attempted to lighten the mood. Hermione cottoned on to her weakness.

"Girls stick needles through their earlobes. Anorexics starve themselves. We all do something to keep looking good."

McGonagall was stunned, at which Hermione smirked. She would have to speak to Albus about this girl. No...she couldn't give the greatest wizard of all time a sudden heart attack- she would have to discourse with someone more disposable. Severus it was.

Professor Snape was in no rush to see the girl but accepted that he was the only one vile enough to do the honours. He anticipated Monday's appointment with a stiff upper lip and simply resigned himself to the punishment.

At first, he said nothing to her and proceeded with illegal child labour. Occasionally he would notice a twitch or a sting that gave away her reported condition. He was pleased to say he did not see a repeat of her behaviour from the other day- that was truly unsettling and the professor had better things to do than connect the dots.

Miss Granger was angry today (When was she not?); she had a habit of being exceptionally perfectionistic when in an extra bad mood, and Severus had never seen his store cupboard more hinting of OCD. If he wasn't careful, someone might think he'd gotten married.

"Miss Granger?" he interrupted her manic colour-coding. Hermione looked up with a stony expression. "Yes, Sir?" she asked blankly. Snape struggled to unravel her defences.

"I think you'll agree that you are particularly gifted in the field of lunacy?" he attempted, then cursed himself, for he was only encouraging the girl. "Roll up your sleeves," he resolved without pausing to take a breath. The sooner they got this over with the better.

It was second nature for Severus to pull a disguise in front of Voldemort, but when Severus saw those harsh red lines on Hermione's arms, dotted over a lifetime of storytelling scars, he fought hard to keep a frown from belying his thoughts. This girl was quite a piece of work, clearly. More complex than he'd first imagined. Still an attention-seeking brat, no doubt, but there were more shadows here than he'd expected of a fourteen-year-old girl; she was if nothing else, an enigma.

"_Proud_ of your battle-scars are you?" he derided, unable to help being an insensitive git. "I have quite a few myself," he provoked, trying to trick the girl into speaking.

Hermione was totally unfazed. She'd treated her body with nonchalance all her life; if she hadn't, she wouldn't have survived. She cocked her head carelessly to one side.

"Let's see then," she challenged, adding, "Bet they're not as ruler-straight as mine." Snape appraised her witheringly. Making up his mind, he bared his right forearm to reveal some doodles the Dark Lord had once tried his hand at. His pale skin was flecked with hundreds of the things, like craters in the moon, abundant as the stars on a starry night.

Suddenly Hermione felt sick. Her pulse quickened as Snape swam before her eyes. She couldn't breathe, she had to get out of there-

"Hermione?" Harry echoed in her ear, on spotting the girl looking like she was in labour. He had an odd sense of déjà vu.

"Mental, that one," Ron muttered, next to him. "I'm tellin' you, she's worse than my mum." Harry silenced him with a glare and ran after his quasi-friend. Ron thought for a moment, then shrugged (Why bother with the effort?). Anyway, Harry Potter was a self-effacing loner. Alright, he was famous and all that, but people at Hogwarts had long accepted that Harry had a serious social anxiety problem and was best left to his own devices. Nevertheless, he was a Gryffindor through and through.

"Hermione," he called, cornering Hermione somewhere on the second-floor corridor.

"What?" Hermione snapped, catching her breath. She closed her eyes and burned herself at her mental stake, where she was no longer a danger to anyone else.

"Let's talk," he reasoned. Hermione seemed to see him for the first time. She lost herself in his haunted green eyes, keeping a safe distance all the same.

"Harry?" she questioned softly. "Tell me what your relatives were like."

A light went out in Harry's eyes. "The Dursleys were very hospitable." He laughed humourlessly. Hermione took a plunge that was more reckless than anything she'd ever done before, and tentatively held his hand.

"_Oooh_," a shrill voice pierced the quiet. Parvati Patil and her sidekick Lavender brown, were back with a bang. Without warning, Parvati shoved Hermione roughly against the wall, and poured something putrid down her throat. Lavender dealt with Harry when he tried to stop her.

"Go home, loser," Parvati spat at Hermione's deadweight in her arms. She reeled Hermione into the girls' toilets at the end of the corridor and locked her in, for extra measure.

"Obliviate!" Lavender shot inexpertly at Harry. A spindly jet of light shot from her wand to Harry's forehead as he wobbled in slow-motion to the ground. Funny thing was, he was still having that déjà vu.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: No Place Like Home**

"Hermione?" a voice chided from the open doorway.

"Coming," she called urgently. She felt a morbid desire to meet her father after the lonely school year, even though she knew what was coming.

She could handle it as long as she didn't look at herself, or at him. In any case, she'd grown rather attached to the light blue wall of his room, a bubbly sea in which she would happily drown.

'_Wish I had Harry's invisibility cloa_k', she recalled wryly. She felt so big, she thought she was inflating. Conscious of her chest but there was nothing she could do about it. She hated that she was a girl.

She hadn't known there was a difference when she was little, between men and women, because she'd never seen a man before she was seven. At least, she couldn't remember it. Vaguely, she knew that they were there, fuzzy smudges smeared haphazardly through her memories, like spoiled photographs. She knew her father was there, for example, when she moved to London and he bought her a man-size teddy bear, even though he didn't show up in her mental snapshot. Like always, he hovered just outside the focus, painfully camera-shy and equally deceptive.

But something had changed about the picture. There was someone else there too, now. A big, black, blurry monster, devouring darkness into the black hole that was inside him, expanding with every sucking breath he took. Like a bear but shapeless, heartless, nonnegotiable.

She was in a basement, no- it was a cave- drenched in darkness, enclosed by a large tombstone. A little light poured through the entrance, but her mother did not stay for long and saw only the punishment, not the methods of the bear.

A grizzly perhaps, or simply an extension of the darkness. She sat in a chest, half open but even still she was shut in by her lack of options, confused by the silhouette of her bed on the other side, merged into this dungeon but unfitting as a truth that was hard to swallow. She couldn't tell if the bear was coming closer or was sucking her into the black hole of his stomach: a clear view into the solar system, draped by the shapeshifting flutters of his cloak. And she realised, the chest was sinister because it was open, not closed.

Three universes were bulldozed by dark matter painfully; the bear, the box, the bed and then the video tape stopped reeling, backing off from the void that wanted to name itself so badly but was beyond the recesses of her mind- a no-man zone, a metaphysical something.

Hermione was eight; a pair of arms the length of the Great Hadron Collider flexed out to get her- but in the end it was the graze of a nail that hooked her in a place where there was no safe-house of skin to shield her.

She was flushed, embarrassed, her throat was tight; her clothes kept falling off when she had to make a public speech, to face him, to talk to him: her father, the human X-Ray, or the X-ray inhuman; who she loved in a separate lifetime, alternate reality, disturbing dream.

Was this reality- was it a dream- or had her dreams merged into reality; fiction found its match at last?

Hermione prayed to silence, and gave nothing away in her brisk entry into the room. Her father didn't smile of course, but she grinned like a goofball. She walked up to him in a sort of mating ritual, like a bird, shuffling every now and then as per some medieval reproductive gene.

Nothing happened. Or did it? An innocent, stroke of the back. A hidden motive. Not so hidden? He asks a question, he answers. Your body is simply the go-between.

"What was that you put in Hermione's mouth?" Lavender asked Parvati on afterthought. Parvati gave a smug sneer.

"Oh, that: it's just something I picked off Professor Trelawney- it's supposed to 'open the mind'. The girls snickered at their private joke at the outcast's expense.

Professor Snape was worried. Well no, 'worried' wasn't in his vocabulary so 'murderous' would be the best substitute. Hermione Granger had missed all her lessons that day, something akin to an apocalypse. Boggled though she may be, she was an avid learner and hadn't been sighted in the Dark Arts section of the library for a good deal of hours. Something was up.

He paced viciously in his study, growling his displeasure to an aggravated prequel to 'The Monster Book of Monsters' that was grudgingly relevant to preparing the carcasses of dangerous animals in potion-making.

"_Potter_," he snarled, his reference to anything incriminating, and was as usual enlightened as to his source of sniffing trouble. He strode purposefully to the hospital wing, a smile of grim satisfaction warping his features beyond redemption, though they were damned to begin with.

"Hello Potter," he snarled at the bemused inpatient blinking up at him. All the teachers were forewarned he'd suffered some kind of 'shock to the system' that left him 'abnormally disoriented'.

"Am I a pot?" he asked forthrightly, arranging his thoughts on the discovery. "Wicked."

"Harry," Snape grudgingly spat his given name at his flat denial of the second.

"_Excuse_ me?" Harry demanded, outraged. "Did you just call me a hairy pot?"

"Yes I did," Snape snapped, losing it. "A hairy _chamber_ pot." Both made a face at the suggestion.

"Moving on-" Snape recovered, to be met with Harry's heartfelt condolences.

"I'm sorry to hear that you died," he lied. Snape wouldn't be sorry at all.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" he improvised.

"I think you mean hell."

"YES!" Snape roared like a demented spirit in want of no salvation. "From the flames of hell I came to ask you if you have seen Miss Hermione Granger!"

Harry thought about it for a moment. He tried, he really did. Then he gave a knowing smile.

"You sly thing," he insisted, grinning broadly at the emotional wreck. "If that's your wedding invite then Miss Granger is your corpse bride."

"How astute," he commented acidly. "I was worried no one would pick up on that."

It was worth investigating Madam Pomfrey's information that he was found blabbering on the second floor corridor by the girls' toilets, when Potter reconciled himself to become a complete and utter blithering idiot. Snape marched there with no time wasted, pleased to put as much distance between himself and the fool as possible while he sorted out his mental issues.

It was deserted-no surprises there. He might be a dour, cynical Potions Master whose life's ambition was to poison everyone but hands up to Moaning Myrtle who had charms he could never lay claim to. He came to a stop outside the toilets: Miss Granger had been known to cry like Myrtle's long lost relative in her first year, shut up in toilets with trolls on the loose. Who knew? Maybe the pair of them were bonding over flooding the toilet.

"Alohamora," he hissed, swinging the door open with one swift, depressing movement.

He took a sharp inhale. Hermione was strewn across the floor tiles clumsily, her bushy hair netting her, grimy and clumpy from the dank bathroom's touches; eyes open but beyond her immediate surroundings, staring in bleak horror at some scene unfolding behind them. Snape strode to the place where she was cocooned with uncanny hesitation. Perhaps he should have become a psychiatrist rather than a professor, with all the raving lunatics he was happening across.

Hermione whimpered ever so slightly, her eyes watering at freezing point, still out of focus. Her face was a frown such as Snape had never seen before: lips puckered in determination, breathing sharp and shrill, hard eyes squinting and belying their vulnerability, moisture condensing on her fluttering eyelashes in the beginnings and the residue of a volatile storm.

Snape refused to be caught off guard: he swallowed deliberately and swept Hermione in his arms, making his way, yet again, to the hospital wing. Try as he might, he could not think what was the cause of her spooky symptoms: she was neither awake nor asleep and was technically well except that she couldn't hold herself up and gave the appearance of being in some distress. Hermione had once been petrified in her second year, he remembered, but then it had been magical and could be likened now only in the literal sense of the word.

Even Pomfrey was confused. She conducted a series of extensive experiments and tests, but all reported that Hermione was in fine shape and form and should be up to her usual cringeworthy practices if she wasn't lying crumpled on a bed, looking like the grim 'weeper' instead of reaper.

"I can only conclude that she is in some kind of shock. She's physically fine and mentally- well- she was always shaky in the first place, but it looks like she's finally gone and lost it."

"I disagree," said a voice from the opposite bed. The adults met Harry Potter's green eyes with dubious alarm.

"Shouldn't he be asleep?" Snape hinted silkily. "Or- ah- put in a madhouse." Madam Pomfrey tutted wearily.

"Now, now, Severus; we mustn't give up on the boy. He could be regaining sanity any moment now."

Harry shrugged and sat up straight. His glasses were wonky and his hair stood on end but there was nothing new there. "I wouldn't be quite so cocky if I were you." He waggled a finger perilously at them, then slumped back and shrugged. "I don't see why you're complaining, anyway." He gestured vaguely towards Hermione. "She's seeing the beyond."

"I'm afraid there's no hope at all, Madam Pomfrey, when he channels Sybil Trelawney."

She frowned indiscernibly. "You know Severus, I think he may have a point." Snape's eyebrows hit the roof. "She has been known to dally with brews alleged to heighten the 'inner eye'. It's worth investigating."

Since Snape was already juggling the part-time job of Hermione's therapist, a little detour in medicinal fraud was hunky-dory. His visit to Professor Trelawney (if you could call her a professor) was short and snappy.

Snape stuck his greasy head out of the trapdoor leading to Divination, and curled his lip so apoplectically he briefly suffered from epilepsy. Lurid pink shawls covered overstuffed poufs and armchairs that looked like an obese grandma had rented every last one. There was a shelf devoted to teacups and saucers that would be at home with a mad coot like Dumbeldore, and some looked like they were poorly transfigured from Ronald Weasley's beloved rat.

Sybil Trelawney was hunched over a crystal ball, willing herself to see something in it. She caught Snape's reflection as he hovered over it, and cried tears of pride at having finally managed the spectacle, to Snape's surly chagrin. He cleared his throat lightly, at which Trelawney jumped about a foot in the air and congratulated herself on hearing voices in her head.

"You don't happen to have a remedy for that 'inner eye' do you?" he ventured casually.

Professor Trelawney coughed and spluttered. She peered at him out of her magnifying glasses.

"Severus?" she whispered emotionally. "This is exceptional- I do believe I'm hallucinating!" she squealed.

"Congratulations," said Severus drily. "May your hallucination ask you a teensy question?" He was getting quite the hang of dealing with crazy people.

"Oh, my dear boy, yes- the remedy is here!" she waddled over to a row of misty vials and selected a grim grey one.

"Thanks," Snape drawled as he took it. "Out of interest, why do you carry a remedy anyway? Surely you wish to immortalise your kooky enlightenment?"

Trelawney rolled her eyes balefully. "My dear boy- forgive me- but you must open your mind! That bottle is my backup if the real thing doesn't work."

Divination was one big delusion.

Trelawney may be more inexpert than the Giant Squid in any qualification, but this must be the off-chance that she got something right. Worst come to worst, her concoction would have no effect, like all her tacky instruments. Snape administered the antidote sceptically, wondering how the girl guzzled Trelawney's stockpiles in the fist place, when she ditched divination in that temper tantrum last year- a topic of gossip even now in the Staff Room.

The effect was instantaneous. Hermione's eyes pricked open, panicky and distrusting. Snape backed away.

Snape was not an affectionate man, but he never wanted to see that look turned on him again. He glared daggers in an oddly reassuring manner- because it was normal and ordinary and so Professor Snape, at Hogwarts, her home.


End file.
